On A New York evening of thin tedium
A woman with blue eyes and some feeling read
A poem; while the city like a drum
Heavied her voice. Casually, she was dead

A little later. I recall and cannot find
The poem. It was a poem then,
About a clock that ticked and would unwind
In an old house, and strike out nine or ten

While sparrows chaffered and feathered on outside.
By Thomas Hardy. Three quatrains.
We were not friends. We were polite. She died
In a meagre way, I think, of minor pains…

And in the deckle edges of his thick
Books I have looked, but I cannot find
The poem. Still the clock does tick
Somewhere, and the springs unwind.

(And the insignificant woman, and the dull, polite
Evening…the subway crammed and stale…. )
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight, goodnight, goodnight,
Woman and poem in limbo.
Detail, detail,
Of the infallible city of our failure, drawn to scale.

He is stark mad, who ever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say,
I saw a flask of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come!
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;
They come to us, but us love draws,
He swallows us, and never chaws:
By him, as by chained shot, whole ranks do die,
He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If 'twere not so, what did become
Of my heart, when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room, I carried none with me:
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
More pity unto me: but Love, alas,
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite,
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite;
And now as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more.